Are you a software engineer? Programmer? QA specialist? How long have you been at your current position? How long do you expect to be? I bet it’s less than 5 years.

Why would that be an important issue for open source? Most of the time you spend most of your time working OSS projects at home, right? But I bet someday you’d like to get paid for that work, unless like some OSS developers you base your happiness on the proliferation of your software.

So one day you are going to pack up and leave your company, and all of it’s proprietary software behind. And if you are developing Python, that probably means you are leaving a gaping, expensive hole for your former employer. But what if you could keep working for that employer, after you left? What if what you were doing at the new job was so transferable that you could be productive from day 1?

This is the promise that is OSS. And while this promise is probably idealist, it has at least one tentacle sticking out from reality. The fact is, workers are migratory these days. Personally I think this is because short-sighted investors value fiscal gains over a longer payoff, but we do live in the day of day-trading. The fact is, many people don’t see programmers for what they really are, a mixture of engineer, mathematician and artist. I can always seem to find someone who will pay me more money to do the same job I already have. When something I just can’t turn down for my family’s sake comes up, I have to take it. For this reason programmers, and even the greater workforce migrates.

Employers have already realized that employees are migratory. They have all but done-away with pension plans in exchange for portability: the 401k. Who cares what kind of health insurance we offer? 80/20 is now the norm, because employers don’t expect to have to pay in the long run, and employees accept it too, because they don’t expect to be working at the company for the long haul, when health insurance becomes more of a factor.

But lets get back to the original question. What does a migratory worker mean to open source. Portability of work. I can take my Django/Turbogears/Zope knowledge to any other company using these technologies and pick up right where I left off. If I am one of the few developing software in the OSS world (as apposed to just using it) I can actually contribute more to my OSS project on my companies dime. The question is, are the companies really losing out by providing their software to the world?

Definitely not. In fact, companies stand to gain much more by choosing (and contributing to) something “free” and open. They retain some value from their employee after said person has left the company.  Bug patches, new features, etc. all pulled from the same pot they were putting their goodies in before. Since the software is open and free, more people have access to it in the age where replication of information is almost cost-less. That means they have a larger work force to choose from, and more experts and shared expertise to gain from.

So then the question becomes, “As a company, why should I contribute to open source?”  The fact is you are going to get back more than you give.  Your employees will gain greater expertise by helping to build the tools that they use.  Additionally, the company is helping to keep the project’s momentum going, which ensures the OSS project’s longevity.  It is no secret that “feature complete” projects often fall by the wayside, regardless of quality.  By playing an active role in a project’s development, you are ensuring that that project will be available, and have a good support system even if your employees have moved on.

If you are a company who is battling with the decision to contribute to, or even use open source, I implore you to look seriously at your options, your [migratory] workforce, and your ability to develop a product for the long haul. I bet you find more value in free software than the sticker price. Software, more than ever, is about the people, not the product.